ng to the Septuagint version,
was adopted by the Greeks; and the Latins, since the age of Charlemagne,
have computed their time from the birth of Christ.

Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Character Of Balisarius.--Part I.

Conquests Of Justinian In The West.--Character And First
Campaigns Of Belisarius--He Invades And Subdues The Vandal
Kingdom Of Africa--His Triumph.--The Gothic War.--He
Recovers Sicily, Naples, And Rome.--Siege Of Rome By The
Goths.--Their Retreat And Losses.--Surrender Of Ravenna.--
Glory Of Belisarius.--His Domestic Shame And Misfortunes.

When Justinian ascended the throne, about fifty years after the fall of
the Western empire, the kingdoms of the Goths and Vandals had obtained
a solid, and, as it might seem, a legal establishment both in Europe and
Africa. The titles, which Roman victory had inscribed, were erased
with equal justice by the sword of the Barbarians; and their successful
rapine derived a more venerable sanction from time, from treaties,
and from the oaths of fidelity, already repeated by a second or third
generation of obedient subjects. Experience and Christianity had refuted
the superstitious hope, that Rome was founded by the gods to reign
forever over the nations of the earth. But the proud claim of perpetual
and indefeasible dominion, which her soldiers could no longer maintain,
was firmly asserted by her statesmen and lawyers, whose opinions
have been sometimes revived and propagated in the modern schools of
jurisprudence. After Rome herself had been stripped of the Imperial
purple, the princes of Constantinople assumed the sole and sacred
sceptre of the monarchy; demanded, as their rightful inheritance, the
provinces which had been subdued by the consuls, or possessed by the
Caesars; and feebly aspired to deliver their faithful subjects of the
West from the usurpation of heretics and Barbarians. The execution of
this splendid design was in some degree reserved for Justinian. During
the five first years of his reign, he reluctantly waged a costly and
unprofitable war against the Persians; till his pride submitted to
his ambition, and he purchased at the price of four hundred and forty
thousand pounds sterling, the benefit of a precarious truce, which, in
the language of both nations, was dignified with the appellation of the
_endless_ peace. The safety of the East enabled the emperor to employ
his forces against the Vandals; and the in